I moved to Norway in 1996, at seventeen, to attend the International Baccalaureate programme at Berg High School. One of my strongest first impressions of Norwegian society was how egalitarian and quite unassuming people seemed. I lived with the family of Norwegian State Secretary Kai Eide, and it was, in every sense, a regular family: regular dinners, regular teenagers, the usual ups and downs of family life. At school, some of my classmates came from very wealthy families, yet they still took the metro to school and worked ordinary part-time jobs to earn pocket money for CDs or video games.
Even the monarchy somehow belonged to this culture of modesty. The story everyone knew was of King taking public transport, riding the Holmenkollen line like everybody else. To a seventeen-year-old arriving from the Balkans, where men in power were engaged in genocidal enterprises annihilating entire communities, my only experience of real royalties came from movies, and in those movies, kings and queens didn’t use public transport. Those first months of living in Oslo, I was riding the tram half-expecting I will see King Harald V in his full royal regalia sitting among ordinary commuters.
And then came 1999, and the genocidal war reached Kosovo. Slobodan Milošević’s campaign of ethnic cleansing produced the gravest refugee crisis Europe had seen since the Second World War. Kosovo became the first item on the news every day, on every television channel. My own family had to flee Prishtina. They became trapped in the horrific refugee encampment in the no-man’s-land between Kosovo and Macedonia.
Norwegians showed extraordinary solidarity with Kosovars, and King Harald was a leader of that national display of empathy. While NATO’s bombing campaign against Milošević was under way and hundreds of thousands of Kosovo Albanians were being driven from their homes, Norway opened its doors to thousands of refugees and humanitarian concerts were organized to raise money for the victims of the war.
I remember attending one of those benefit concerts myself, in April 1999, at the height of the refugee crisis. The King sat in the front row alongside Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik - himself an ordained Lutheran minister, also a modest man in manner but firm in committing Norway to the NATO effort against Milošević. Norwegian F-16s were already taking part in the air campaign. For me, the image remained striking: the King and the Prime Minister lighting candles in a cathedral while a war was unfolding in the country my family had just fled. Months later, my mother Violeta, a refugee herself now, had the opportunity to host Queen Sonja for a visit to their refugee camp in Oslo.
Living in Norway, one could hardly miss the story of young Crown Prince Harald’s love for Sonja Haraldsen, a commoner and therefore hardly the first choice bride expected for a future king by his own old King Olav. For nine years, the stubborn Prince Harald waited and fought for the right to marry the love of his life. Marriage outside European royalty and nobility was still considered damaging to the monarchy.
Harald prevailed in the end. After consulting the government and parliamentary leaders, King Olav gave his consent in 1968, and Harald and Sonja married in Oslo Cathedral that August. There is a wonderful recent television series, Harald og Sonja, about those nine years - a great royal love story which really did end happily ever after.
And then came the unspeakable horror of the terrorist attacks carried out by Norwegian white supremacist Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered 77 people - most of them teenagers attending the Labour Party’s summer camp on the island of Utøya. In a grim twist, Breivik was later found to have drawn inspiration from Serbian war criminals and ultranationalists. At Norway’s National Memorial Ceremony on August 21, 2011, exactly one month after the attacks in Oslo and on Utøya, King Harald became visibly overwhelmed with emotion. Looking out at the families of the 77 victims, his voice cracked and he gave way to a sob as he delivered these words.
"As a father, grandfather and husband, I have some feeling of what you are going through, but I can only imagine the depth of your pain. As the King of this nation, I feel for each and every one of you."
Historians and citizens alike remember this as a defining moment of his reign, as it bridged the gap between a head of state and a grieving citizen, showing pure empathy.
But my favorite speech of the late King Harald V was not a crisis speech or a formal national address. King Harald delivered it on 1 September 2016 at a large garden party in the Royal Palace Park in Oslo, held as part of celebrations marking King Harald and Queen Sonja’s 25 years on the throne. Invited guests were from all over Norway and civil society organizations. This famous speech had lines that reverberated widely:
“Norwegians are engaged young people and older people rich in life experience. Norwegians are single, divorced, families with children and elderly married couples. Norwegians are girls who love girls, boys who love boys, and girls and boys who love one another.
Norwegians believe in God, Allah, the Everything and Nothing.
Norwegians like Grieg and DJ Kygo, Hellbillies and Kari Bremnes.
In other words: Norway is you.
Norway is us.”
In memory of the late King Harald V, I’m sharing this speech here in full. I believe that today, perhaps more than ever, its message reaches far beyond Norway. It speaks to a fundamental truth about identity, love and compassion - and, to me, captures something essential about the reign of the late King.
Rest in peace.
“After many years of travelling around most of the country, it is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to host representatives from all across Norway!
A very warm welcome to you all!
Those of you gathered here represent the breadth and diversity of what Norway is today.
So what is Norway?
Norway is high mountains and deep fjords. It is plateaus and archipelagos, islands and skerries. It is fertile fields and gentle moorlands.
The sea beats against the country from the north, west and south.
Norway is the midnight sun and the polar night. It has both harsh and mild winters. It has both warm and cold summers.
Norway is long and sparsely populated.
But above all, Norway is people.
Norwegians are people from Northern Norway, Trøndelag, Southern Norway — and from all the other regions of the country.
Norwegians have also immigrated from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland, Sweden, Somalia and Syria. My own grandparents immigrated from Denmark and England 110 years ago.
It is not always so easy to say where we are from, or which nationality we belong to. The place we call home is where our heart is — and that cannot always be contained within national borders.
Norwegians are young and old, tall and short, able-bodied and wheelchair users. More and more are living beyond the age of one hundred. Norwegians are rich, poor and somewhere in between. Norwegians enjoy football and handball, climb mountain peaks and sail — while others are happiest on the sofa.
Some have great self-confidence, while others struggle to believe that they are good enough just as they are.
Norwegians work in shops, in hospitals and on oil platforms. Norwegians work to keep us safe, work to keep the country free of rubbish, and search for new solutions for a greener future. Norwegians cultivate the land and fish the seas. Norwegians conduct research and teach.
Norwegians are engaged young people and older people rich in life experience. Norwegians are single, divorced, families with children and elderly married couples. Norwegians are girls who love girls, boys who love boys, and girls and boys who love one another.
Norwegians believe in God, Allah, the Universe and Nothing.
Norwegians like Grieg and Kygo, Hellbillies and Kari Bremnes.
In other words: Norway is you.
Norway is us.
When we sing “Ja, vi elsker dette landet” — “Yes, we love this country” — we should remember that we are also singing about one another. Because it is we who make up this country. Our national anthem is therefore also a declaration of love to the Norwegian people.
My greatest hope for Norway is that we will succeed in taking care of one another.
That we will continue building this country — on trust, community and generosity.
That we will feel that, despite all our differences, we are one people.
That Norway is one.